Extracted Text

The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:

between NAEP reading scores and print access; these correlations remained strong whencontrolling for socioeconomic factors.Krashen notes that California's scores on the 1992 NAEP reading test were among thenation's lowest, and lays the blame in part on the state's school libraries, which the author calls"among the worst in the United States, both in terms of books and staffing" (2004, p. 66). Today,the situation is unimproved. The 2005 NAEP scores show California outscoring only one otherstate and the District of Columbia on the reading portion of the test (Perie, Grigg, & Donahue,2005), and library media specialist staffing ratios-the number of students per library mediaspecialist-are so impoverished that the gap between the 49th state and California is greater thanthe gap between the 49th and 1st states (Everhart, 2003).Krashen (2004) also notes the inequity in the levels of resources available to studentsfrom high and low socio-economic backgrounds, and points out that while students fromwealthier parents generally have access to a print-rich environment at home and book stores,students from poorer backgrounds have no such access, making the role of the school library allthe more crucial. Two studies of access to books in Los Angeles area communities of differingincome levels support this position, finding statistically significant differences between high andlow socioeconomic status for access to home, classroom and school library books. (Constantino,2005; Smith, Constantino & Krashen, 1997). These studies are consistent with the findings ofNeuman and Celano (2001), who found when comparing poor and middle-class neighborhoodsin Philadelphia that poor neighborhoods were significantly less print-rich, and that the children inthose neighborhoods therefore had many fewer opportunities to engage with text.Not surprisingly, school libraries in poor neighborhoods often don't provide access tonearly as many resources as do those in wealthier areas. Neuman and Celano's (2001) analysis